About the Author

Angel Allendale is an Arizona desert girl who has wandered the world, launching into each new experience with frenetic energy to embrace enough change that she doesn’t need to focus on the roiling storm within her. Those moments of clarity and acceptance are slaughtered by the next dive into the fathoms of the mind.

Writing fantastical worlds, beginning at age 11, was an exquisite escape from the tempest inside her. The connection between artistic affinities and madness is well documented. There are many ways that writers with mental illness can be textbook – “they” find escape in writing because they can make the world of words make more sense than the thoughts in their heads.

It has ever been Angel’s intention to be a good role model for the girls – ages 3-18 – that she has coached at elite soccer clubs, but she especially tried to reach the teenagers, the girls the same age as Kýrie Kylkynne in the Absolute Series. The message that they are not alone, that they are valued, that they are capable of triumphing over great trials, is something she tries to embed in every practice and every coach-athlete bond. (Jordan L., Hannah S., Emily P., especially…) Her mental illness experience started young…sports and academics were two of the passions that saved her over and over and over…as well as the Inner Universe of Aalenstar that she has written in the Absolute Series.

Angel’s passion for the mental wellbeing of women and girls has led her to work within diverse populations and objectives; such as, with youth on a Native American reservation, nuns in Belgium, orphanages in Mexico, mental health centers in Morocco, high school students in Taiwan, and soccer clubs in North Carolina. Her college academics combined International Studies, Psychology, and the Middle East to arm her with tools for community development and cross-cultural connections. Angel continues to work in this field with development entrepreneurs in East Africa who are seeking to confront poverty in innovative and passionate ways.

Angel lives in Arizona with her Siberian Husky, Jasmyn, near dear family and dozens of cousins, but she is a wild spirit of the world, picking up languages and nuances of new cultures every moment that that she can. She enjoys taking Jasmyn longboarding surrounded by cactus and creosote under desert moonbeams that paint the desert with waxen black-white-grey dreams. Her family has an offroad race team in a community of reckless abandon. They travel and explore. They discover and grow.

Existential dissonance. Perdue dans l’abîme du destin. Lost in the abyss of destiny. There will always be نور. Light. There will always be the duende. Soul.